‘According to my mother’s diaries, Hugh used to piss himself in fear when Christine and her friends bullied him as a child.’ Faith screws up her face. ‘And the same woman, years later, swept me out of her shop like a piece of garbage when I was a child. If my mum hadn’t had to traipse all the way to Tesco, Hugh would never have found you.’

‘Did you kill Christine’s husband?’

She nods. ‘I had to. I needed Christine alone. Vulnerable. Though I was disappointed to hear he would have died anyway.’

Alice’s stomach knots painfully. She looks again at the puppets, takes in the neat stitching at the base of their ankles. She swallows hard. ‘Where are their feet?’

‘I cut them off. It stopped them from running away.’ Faith points at a saw hanging on the wall. ‘Did you know our grandpa used to use that to chop women into three pieces?’ Her gaze returns to Alice. A smile. ‘I’m so glad I found you again, Rosie – so, so glad. I just wish Mummy and Hugh were here to see us back together again.’

Bile rises in Alice’s throat, threatening to choke her.

‘I read about your father’s death in the media,’ Faith goes on. ‘Saw the photographs of him. I knew it was Hugh immediately from the endless portraits my mother painted over the years. Those eyes, that sharp nose – they could have only belonged to Hugh Flynn.’ She tilts her head like a bird. ‘I remember those eyes from when I was a child. I’d so wanted him to look at me through them and be proud I was his daughter. But I know now why that never happened.’

Thoughts of her father’s death flood Alice’s head. The moment the police came into her shop, told her the awful news.

‘And that’s how I discovered you too – from the pictures in the media. I knew it was you, Rosie.’

‘Did you kill my father?’

Faith laughs, and shakes her head. ‘Good God, no – I loved him. You loved him. My mother loved him – why would I kill him?’

‘I don’t know, Faith.’ A tear rolls down her cheek. ‘Why would you do any of this?’

She bites down hard on her lip, and then whispers, ‘I know who did kill him. And it was no accident.’

The memory of losing her dad punches Alice’s heart afresh.

‘It was Tegan Matthews.’

‘Tegan?’ Alice’s mind flashes to the news report she saw earlier that evening in the TV lounge. Tegan was dead: police are treating her death as suspicious. ‘Tegan killed my dad?’

Faith nods three times. ‘I heard her confessing to Leon in the pub in Whitby. I was standing at the bar. It was the day you met the delightful Mitch. Remember? You ran off when you saw Leon.’ She smiles. ‘And later I followed you.’